Comments on: boo.

By: The Magical Rainbow Sparkle Pony | Ravven's Glass

The Magical Rainbow Sparkle Pony | Ravven's Glass — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 07:45:45 +0000

[...] someone who was very, very upset about the whole Allods Cash Shop episode, and has stopped playing said game because of it, I don’t see what the problem is. The Allods [...]

By: Squirrel

Squirrel — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:05:59 +0000

It’s just one of those little MMO’s that ticks away in the background, nothing I’d ever play, but they did adopt servers that applied permadeath, which was brave in my opinion!

By: Ravven

Ravven — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:01:53 +0000

An MMO with permadeath? I’ve never heard of Dofus. I’m too much of a weenie to even play Darkfall, where people can take all your cash and gear and kill your mount. Permadeath? Not in a million. :D

By: Squirrel

Squirrel — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:52:31 +0000

PS – Dofus = an MMO with permadeath. You owe me a million dollars pls

: )

By: Squirrel

Squirrel — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:49:50 +0000

But Beau, once I’ve agreed to spend �8.99 to Blizzard I can play end-game raiding as much as I like for the month – and die as often as needed to succeed in an encounter. By enabling these frankly ridiculous charges to be able to raid end-game in Allods it does two things: alienates people like me and effectively means I won’t bother playing the game and levelling because I know there’s no way I’ll be bending over for that kind of rip off, and b: makes me think they’d have been far better off charging a flat subscription fee.

It seems like a fairly good game, spoilt by a distributor once again, as have so many recent MMOs been. Conan, Aion, STO – all tarnished by publishers rushing out content, or not looking after the playerbase at launch. I feel sorry for the devs putting in all the hard work for the bean counters to go and fck it all up.

By: Beau

Beau — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:28:15 +0000

But, as it has been proven time and time again, both by players and by the developers themselves, as well as has been shown during the last several months of game-play:

You can do just fine, all the way until the “end” of the game, without touching the cash-shop.

And no one lives or dies if they don’t buy the cash shop items. In fact, I will bet you a million dollars that you cannot name a single MMO that actually uses perma-death. As with all MMO’s, PvP is simply a pause in game-play, not a death at all.

By: Ravven

Ravven — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:07:28 +0000

The difference between my artwork and a game like Allods is that no one lives or dies if they don’t buy my artwork. In Allods, you pretty much have to spend a ton of money in order to play (in its present form). Or perhaps that is a flawed analogy…you can either play, or not play based on the FoD costs. My head hurts, it’s been a very long day at work. :)

As I said, I’m fine with the bags – just like I’m fine with paying for mounts. And pretty outfits that I can “skin” my current armor with. But being forced to pay many times a normal monthly subscription cost in order to experience Allods endgame is not something most people will do. I mean, seriously – how many times do we die in MMOs? Unless you’re incredibly l33t, or the game is absurdly easy, probably quite often at higher levels. I do, anyway, I totally admit. So if I don’t buy the perfume (estimated costs from people who have played to endgame in excess of $50/month), I have to say “well, guys, that’s me for the night, I have FoD for two hours”. It’s a game breaker, where fripperies are not.

And thank you for your kind words about my art! I really appreciate that.

By: Beau

Beau — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:55:05 +0000

The problem is that you are talking about what is “sensible” to you, as in price to pay. With admitting your price, you hit the nail on the head. You have to admit that the prices in the shop COULD be some other players price.

While I do agree that the prices are too high (I have always said that) I do not claim that my comfort zone for pricing should be everyone elses. And there is nothing wrong with a company charging a good amount for their art, and hoping that it sells.

A question, since like me, you are an artist: how do you price your goods? For me, I always went really cheap because I wanted to move more pieces. I had friends that went really expensive, and sold less, but averaged out like I did.

So, do you think it is possible that anyone could look at your prices and laugh? Of course. Let’s not pretend that gPotato is not allowed to name THEIR price for THEIR art.

My article wasn’t about the bags only, I said that much. The bags represent normal everyday items in cash shops around the world, and now in NA. The bags also represent the normal bartering process for goods, something you should be very familiar with.

By the way, nice art! :)

Beau